Growing a design team from three people to twenty
I spent almost a decade at Selfridges taking a UX team of three into a multidisciplinary function of more than twenty. Most of what I learned about leadership came from getting parts of that wrong first.
Hiring for the gap
Early on I hired people who worked the way I did, which felt efficient and produced a team that agreed with me far too easily.
Building out a multidisciplinary function meant hiring researchers, content people and design system specialists whose craft I could assess but couldn't personally do. That was uncomfortable and it made the team much better.
The practical test I use now is whether a candidate would change my mind about something. If I can't imagine that happening, I'm probably hiring a copy.
Systems and consistency
Building and rolling out a design system across Product, Technology and Creative was the piece of work that most changed how the team spent its time.
The technical side was the easier half. The harder part was agreeing who owned a component, what happened when a brand campaign wanted an exception, and how three functions with different incentives would keep it alive after launch.
A design system that nobody maintains becomes a constraint rather than a help within about a year. I've seen that happen elsewhere and the maintenance conversation is the one I now have first.
Coaching people
I've always learned better by doing something, getting it wrong and figuring out why, than by only studying the theory behind it. That belief has shaped how I manage.
Building a coaching culture at Selfridges meant giving people work slightly beyond what they were ready for and staying close enough to catch the serious failures without removing the useful ones.
Several people I hired as juniors moved into management during that time, which is probably the outcome I'm most pleased with. It's also the slowest kind of result to see, and there were long stretches where I wasn't sure it was working.
Leading across distance
At JoyBuy I lead a UX and digital design organisation split across London and Beijing. The distance is only part of it: the working assumptions, decision-making pace and expectations around feedback are all different.
What has helped most is writing things down that I'd previously have handled in conversation. Decisions, reasoning, what was considered and rejected.
I don't think I have this fully worked out yet. It's quite a different job from leading a team who all sit in the same building, and I'm still learning where my instincts don't transfer.
Where I’ve done this
- Grew the UX team at Selfridges from 3 designers to over 20 multidisciplinary specialists across nearly a decade.
- Built and rolled out a scalable design system across Product, Technology and Creative.
- Built a coaching culture that developed people from junior roles into management.
- Leads a multidisciplinary UX and digital design organisation across London and Beijing as Associate Director Experience Design at JoyBuy.